His For Christmas. Michelle Douglas

      To Lynne and Larry Cormack with heartfelt gratitude for twenty-five years of friendship

Chapter One

      TEARS. BOOKS THROWN. And pencils. Breakage. Namecalling. Screaming. Hair-pulling. It was like a scene from a bad marriage or the kind of drama that a reality television show adored, rife with mayhem, conflicts, conspiracies.

      But it wasn’t a bad marriage, or bad TV.

      It was Morgan McGuire’s life, and it didn’t help one bit that each of the perpetrators in today’s drama had been under four feet tall. The day had culminated with a twenty-one-child “dog pile on the rabbit.”

      It was the kind of day they had failed to prepare her for at teacher’s college, Morgan, first-year first-grade teacher, thought mournfully.

      And somehow, fair or not, in her mind, it was all his fault.

      Nate Hathoway, father of Cecilia Hathoway, the child who had been at the very center of every single kerfuffle today, including being the rabbit in that unfortunate dog pile.

      Now, Morgan McGuire paused and stared at the sign in front of her. Hathoway’s Forge. Her heart was beating hard, and it wasn’t just from the walk from school, either.

      Don’t do it, her fellow teacher Mary Beth Adams had said when Morgan had asked her at lunch if she thought she should go beard the lion in his den.

      Or the devil at his fire, as the case might be.

      “But he’s ignoring my notes. He hasn’t signed the permission slip for Cecilia—”

      “Cecilia?”

      Morgan sighed. “Ace. Her real name’s Cecilia. I think she needs something feminine in her life, including her name. That was what the first fight this morning was about. Her hairstyle.”

      Not that the haircut was that new, but today there had been a very unusual new styling for the haircut. How could he have let her out of the house looking like that?

      “And then,” Morgan continued, “one of the kids overheard me ask her about the permission slip to be in The Christmas Angel. She didn’t have it.”

      The production of The Christmas Angel was descending on Canterbury, Connecticut.

      The town had been chosen by the reclusive, aging troubadour Wesley Wellhaven for his second annual Christmas extravaganza.

      The fact that Mr. Wellhaven would be using local children—the first graders would be his backup choir if Cecilia managed to get her permission slip signed—had whipped the children into a frenzy of excitement and dramatic ambition.

      “Morgan, rehearsals are starting next week! Mrs. Wellhaven is arriving to supervise the choir!” Mary Beth said this urgently, as if the fact could have somehow bypassed her fellow teacher.

      “I know. And I already told the class that we are all doing it, or none of us is doing it.”

      “That was foolish,” Mary Beth said. “Can’t Ace Hathoway just sit in the hall and read a book while the rest of the children rehearse?”

      “No!” Morgan was aghast at the suggestion. But meanwhile, poor Cecilia was being seen as the class villain because she was the only one with no permission slip. “If I don’t talk to him, Cecilia is going to continue to suffer.”

      Mary Beth shook her head. “Just let her sit in the hall.”

      “It’s not just the permission slip. I have to address some other issues.”

      “You know that expression about going where angels fear to tread? That would be particularly true of Hathoway’s Forge. Nate wasn’t Mr. Sunshine and Light before his wife died. Now…” Mary Beth’s voice trailed away and then she continued. “It’s not entirely Nate’s fault, anyway. Kids always get high-strung around Christmas. It’s hitting early because of all the hoopla around the whole Christmas Angel thing.”

      Naturally, Morgan had chosen to ignore Mary Beth’s well-meaning advice about going to visit Nate Hathoway.

      Now, taking a deep breath, she turned off the pavement and up the winding gravel driveway, lined by trees, now nearly naked of leaves. The leaves, yellow and orange, crunched under her feet, sending up clouds of tart aroma.

      Morgan came to a white house, cozy and cottagelike, amongst a grove of trees. It was evident to her that while once it had been well loved, now it looked faintly neglected. The flower beds had not grown flowers this year, but weeds, now depressingly dead. Indigo paint, that once must have looked lively and lovely against the white, was peeling from the shutters, the window trim and the front door that was set deep under a curved arch.

      Despite the fact light was leeching from the late-afternoon autumn air, there were no lights on in the house.

      Morgan knew Cecilia was at the after-school program.

      The road continued on to a building beyond the house. It dwarfed the house, a turn-of-the-century stone barn, but a chimney belched smoke, and light poured out the high upper windows. Morgan realized it was the forge.

      She drew nearer to it. A deep, solid door, under a curved arch that mirrored the one on the house, had a sign on it.

      Go Away.

      That was the kind of unfriendly message, when posted on a door, that one should probably pay strict attention to.

      But Morgan hadn’t come this far to go away. She drew a deep breath, stepped forward and knocked on the door. And was ignored.

      She was absolutely determined she was not going to be ignored by this man anymore! She knocked again, and then, when there was no answer, turned the handle and stepped in.

      She was not sure what she expected: smoke, darkness, fire, but the cavernous room was large and bright. What was left of the day’s natural light was flowing in windows high up the walls, supplemented by huge shop lights.

      In a glance she saw whiskey-barrel bins close to the door full of black wrought iron fireplace pokers and ash shovels, an army of coat holders, stacks of pot racks. Under different circumstances, she would have looked at the wares with great interest.

      Nate Hathoway, she had learned since coming to Canterbury, had a reputation as one of the finest artistic blacksmiths in the world.

      But today, her gaze went across the heated room to where a fire burned in a great hearth, a man in front of it.

      His back was to her, and even though Morgan suspected he had heard her knock, and even heard her enter, he did not turn.

      From the back, he was a breathtaking specimen. Dark brown hair, thick and shiny, scraped where a leather apron was looped around his neck over a denim shirt. His shoulders were huge and wide, tapering perfectly down to a narrow waist, where the apron was tied. Faded jeans rode low on nonexistent hips, hugged the slight swell of a perfect masculine butt.

      Even though his name was whispered with a kind of reverence by every single female Morgan had encountered in Canterbury, she felt unprepared for the pure presence of him, for that masculine something that filled the air around him.

      She felt as if the air was being sucked from her lungs and she debated just leaving quietly before he turned.

      Then she chided herself for such a weak thought. She was here for the good of a six-year-old child who needed her intervention.

      And she was so over being swayed by the attractions of men. A bitter breakup with her own fiancé after she’d had the audacity to consider the job—her own career—in Canterbury still stung. Karl had been astonished that she would consider the low-paid teaching position in the tiny town, then openly annoyed that his own highpowered career didn’t come first. For both of them.

      Morgan